Publications de Karen Ann J Mulleners

Highly deformable flapping membrane wings suppress the leading edge vortex in hover to perform better

Airborne insects generate a leading edge vortex when they flap their wings. This coherent vortex is a low-pressure region that enhances the lift of flapping wings compared to fixed wings. Insect wings are thin membranes strengthened by a system of veins th ...

2025

Highly agile flat swimming robot

Herbert Shea, Karen Ann J Mulleners, Mrudhula Baskaran

Navigating and exploring the surfaces of bodies of water allow swimming robots to perform a range of measurements while efficiently communicating and harvesting energy from the Sun. Such environments are often highly unstructured and cluttered with plant m ...

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE2025

Data from: Event-based reconstruction of time-resolved centreline deformation of flapping flags

Karen Ann J Mulleners

This directory contains open-source data and code obtained at the UNFoLD laboratory at EPFL. This code implements a new tracking method for fast deformation of flapping flags using an event-based camera. Sampled data from experimental results as well as si ...

Zenodo2024

Data from: Optimal blade pitch control for enhanced vertical-axis wind turbine performance

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Sébastien Le Fouest

This directory contains open-source data obtained using a single-bladed H-type vertical-axis wind turbine prototype with individual blade pitching. This data results from the optimisation of the blade's pitching kinematics using a genetic algorithm at two ...

Zenodo2024

Data from: Highly deformable flapping membrane wings suppress the leading edge vortex in hover to perform better

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Alexander Gehrke

This directory contains open-source data obtained at the UNFOLD laboratory at EPFL. The data got recorded for the flexible membrane wings with different stiffnesses expressed by the aeroelastic number Ae and recorded at different angles of attack. More in ...

Zenodo2024

Self-exploring automated experiments for discovery, optimization, and control of unsteady vortex-dominated flow phenomena

Karen Ann J Mulleners

Typical unsteady vortex-dominated flows like those involved in bio-inspired propulsion, airfoil separation, bluff body wakes, and vortex-induced vibrations can be prohibitively expensive to simulate and impossible to measure comprehensively. These examples ...

American Physical Society (APS)2024

Eel-like robot swims more efficiently with increasing joint amplitudes compared to constant joint amplitudes

Auke Ijspeert, Karen Ann J Mulleners, Kamilo Andres Melo Becerra, Alexandros Anastasiadis

This paper is associated with a video winner of a 2023 American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) Gallery of Fluid Motion Award for work presented at the DFD Gallery of Fluid Motion. ...

American Physical Society (APS)2024

Optimal blade pitch control for enhanced vertical-axis wind turbine performance

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Sébastien Le Fouest

Vertical-axis wind turbines are great candidates to enable wind power extraction in urban and off-shore applications. Currently, concerns around turbine efficiency and structural integrity limit their industrial deployment. Flow control can mitigate these ...

Nature Research2024

Time scales of dynamic stall development on a vertical-axis wind turbine blade

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Sébastien Le Fouest, Daniel Marie Fernex

Vertical-axis wind turbines are excellent candidates to diversify wind energy technology, but their aerodynamic complexity limits industrial deployment. To improve the efficiency and lifespan of vertical-axis wind turbines, we desire data-driven models and ...

2023

Strength and timing of primary and secondary vortices generated by a rotating plate

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Diego Francescangeli

Accurate predictions of how vortices grow, evolve, and separate from aerodynamic objects are desirable for various applications ranging from autonomous aerial vehicles to wind turbines. Here, we present an experimental characterisation of the formation pro ...

2023